New President’s Election: Crorepathis, Those With Criminal Cases Among Voters

An overwhelming 71% of electors in the Presidential Elections are crorepathis, while 33% of them have criminal cases pending against them. Women voters are just 9%.

New Delhi: The Electoral College, which will elect the new President of India coming Monday, will be dominated by billionaires and millionaires, apart from those with criminal cases registered against them.

This “not-so-startling fact” has been underlined by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW).

While 71 percent of the electors are crorepathis, 33 percent of them have criminal cases pending against them, as per affidavits submitted by them at the time of their election.

ADR and NEW shared with media on Friday the results of their analysis of affidavits filed by 4,078 of total 4,120 MLAs from all the states of India and 774 of 776 MPs, who will be voting in the election for the highest post in India.

The voting will take place come Monday in the Parliament House at New Delhi and in all the 28 State Assemblies and legislatures of the two Union Territories. All MLAs and MPs are members of the Electoral College, which will elect the President.

One hundred and eighty four of the 543 Lok Sabha MPs have declared criminal cases against them, as did 1,353 of the total 4,078 MLAs of the State and UT Assemblies.

While 445 of the 543, which is 82 percent of Lok Sabha MPs, are crorepathis, 84 percent of Rajya Sabha MPS are super rich. Comparatively, only 68 percent of 4,078 MLAs have shown income in crores.

Based on the number of votes these crorepathi MPs and MLAs will cast, 75 percent voters of the Electoral College are super rich.

Amongst State Assemblies, Karnataka has the maximum number of crorepathi comprising 93 per cent.

In an interesting aside, total percentage of women voters is only 9. While Lok Sabha with 65 women MPs has a 12 percent share in the voting pool, Rajya Sabha has 23 MPs, amounting to 10 percent vote share. All put together, there are only 363 women MLAs in all the State and UT Assemblies, which comprises nine percent of total votes in the electoral pool represented by the States.